The Hostage Crisis in Iran

On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran and took
approximately seventy Americans captive. This terrorist act triggered the most profound crisis of
the Carter presidency and began a personal ordeal for Jimmy Carter and the American people that
lasted 444 days.

President Carter committed himself to the safe return of the hostages while protecting America's
interests and prestige. He pursued a policy of restraint that put a higher value on the lives of the
hostages than on American retaliatory power or protecting his own political future.

The toll of patient diplomacy was great, but President Carter's actions brought freedom for the
hostages with America's honor preserved.

Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, began his reign in 1941, succeeding his father, Reza
Khan, to the throne. In a 1953 power struggle with his prime minister, the Shah gained
American support to prevent nationalization of Iran's oil industry. In return for assuring the U.S.
a steady supply of oil, the Shah received economic and military aid from eight American
presidents.

Early in the 1960s, the Shah announced social and economic reforms but refused to grant broad
political freedom. Iranian nationalists condemned his U.S. supported regime and his
"westernizing" of Iran. During rioting in 1963, the Shah cracked down, suppressing his
opposition. Among those arrested and exiled was a popular religious nationalist and bitter foe of
the United States, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Between 1963 and 1979, the Shah spent billions of oil dollars on military weapons. The real
price of military strength was the loss of popular support. Unable to sustain economic progress
and unwilling to expand democratic freedoms, the Shah's regime collapsed in revolution. On
January 16, 1979, the Shah fled Iran, never to return.

The exiled Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Tehran in February 1979 and whipped popular
discontent into rabid anti-Americanism. When the Shah came to America for cancer treatment in
October, the Ayatollah incited Iranian militants to attack the U.S. On November 4, the American
Embassy in Tehran was overrun and its employees taken captive. The hostage crisis had begun.

A prison journal was kept by Robert C. Ode after being taken captive by Iranian student terrorists at the American embassy in Tehran. Ode donated the diary and other
correspondence to the Carter archives.